Bury Your Dead May Be More Accessible, but They Haven’t Gone Soft

At first listen, Bury Your Dead's latest album, 'It's Nothing Personal,' sounds, well, more commercially-viable. While past efforts aimed to push the hardcore envelope, the follow-up to 2006's 'Beauty and the Breakdown' may actually start getting rock radio airplay. But frontman Myke Terry says don't call it a sell-out.

"Each of us is good at certain things and this album is just highlighting all the things we're good at," he explains. "So if that means that the record is now more accessible, that's okay."

Before the band started recording the disc, the first following their near-fatal van accident back in late September, "a lot of people were like, 'You guys should stay doing just strictly hardcore and straight screaming,' but we've already proven we can do that pretty well. We have the talent, so why not showcase that, and for people to be like, 'If you play more accessible music, that's selling out,' those are the people who want us to stick to what they know us as. To me, that's selling out, because you're sacrificing what you want to do, collectively as a band, for what this small group of people want to hear."

Guitarist Brendan "Slim" MacDonald says while this fifth LP may be more accessible to the masses, the band will never forget where they came from. "Every single person sitting here has the scars from the fights, and the tattoos from friends, and the stories...everything to show for where we've been," says Slim. "It's just a matter of where we want to go.

"We want to make music that's accessible and create a record that will push what we've done, which is be a heavy band, and be a very straight-forward band, and appeal to the type of people who are into heavy music," he adds. "Pushing that angle and being able to broaden the spectrum of people that will buy this type of record and actually be able to not only look at this record, but hear our past records, and kind of pick up on the fact that these are the bands that we were touring with at that point, and this is what was going on for us. We are the band we are today because of everything that's happened to us, and this album is a reflection of what we've been through and who we are today."

Like most bands, Bury Your Dead are the type that'll head out to the nearest record shop the day their album drops, to buy a copy. Call it superstition, but Slim doesn't think so.

"It's not just for luck," he says. "Look, never in a million years growing up did I think I'd ever walk into a major chain store and be able to pick up the thing that I did, that I had something to do with. It reminds me of how hard we've all worked to get to this point, and it feels good to be able to pick up your own record."

Bury Your Dead are hoping you'll pick up their record, too.